The choice to not have children is often viewed as a selfish one, but there are huge misconceptions about how we childfree adults spend our time. In our defense, author Shawna Atteberry writes in protest of a column by Ross Douthat published last month in The New York Times.

In his column, Douthat discusses the dramatic increase in whining among parents and cites Jennifer Senior’s new book, All Joy and No Fun. Senior, he says, describes parenting as more of a shock to today’s parents for a couple of reasons. For one, parenting is the one permanent commitment that has endured in our society. Second, childfree adults today enjoy an abundance of free time and so feel the full negative impact when it’s suddenly snatched away by a needy baby. Douthat portrays this free time in a rather derogatory manner complete with drawn out brunches and happy hours and binge-watching television shows.

From my perspective, it’s evident that there are real misconceptions about childfree living. The people described in Douthat’s article sound more like teens and young adults who haven’t yet taken on the responsibilities of independent living than anyone close to my age, childfree or not. Who has the time or desire to binge watch TV? The childfree adults I know are wholly devoted to their careers, putting in a full forty hours or even more. Our careers are front and center in our lives, and we take seriously our professional contributions to others.

Douthat implies that childfree adults are unable to commit, or that parents are somehow unique in their ability to do so. As a psychologist, I meet parents on a daily basis who have as many as five or six children, and who – sadly – feel no obligation to provide financially or emotionally for their offspring. This is surprisingly true of both dads and moms and blows the theory that parents will instinctively prioritize protecting and caring for their offspring. It’s led me to believe that the willingness to commit is more of an individual personality trait than a side effect of having a child. Those parents who do prioritize their children are held up as heroes of sorts when in fact they are simply taking responsibility for their choice to have kids.

Parental complaining is not only in vogue these days, it’s the focus of our entertainment. Just take a look at this hilarious comedy routine viewed almost five million times.

With so much grumbling about parenthood, perhaps it’s not the childfree folks who are overly focused on themselves. What’s your perspective?

There are 7 Billion plus people living on planet Earth. Given that fact alone I find it ridiculous to view child free adults as "selfish". Is it somehow compassionate and selfless to add to that number?

There are certainly plenty of reasons that adults are child-free which have nothing to do with selfishness. As a woman who is an adult survivor of physical & verbal child abuse, my decades of living with low self esteem and an inexplicable emptiness (which I now realize was the result of the abuse that I lived in denial about) did not make me attractive to decent men who were "marriage material."

I also have very lovely female friends who had the bad luck to be young during the "man shortage" years when the demographics were great for single men but terrible for single women. For some of us, it (marrying and having children) just wasn't meant to be...

Thanks for this article, which has given me some good points to fire back at noisy relatives who repeatedly ask "when are you going to have kids already?" and "don't wait too long or you will have complications, be too old, etc?" :P
For one thing, My husband may not even be able to have kids for medical reasons, so thanks for the constant reminder.
Many women get pregnant to avoid other responsibilities.

My brother started dating a young woman who dropped out of high school and couldn't keep a minimum wage job. She tried to move in after dating for a week. A few weeks after moving in, she got pregnant. He thinks she was behind the many condoms breaking. Now they have broken up but are living in the same house as he figures it will be cheaper than paying her child & spousal support (she doesn't plan on going back to being a cashier, he makes over $80,000). Glad to see they are putting the child's healthy development and happiness first.

Its just Americans (surprise, surprise) who would hold the belief and call it selfish not to have kids. Its been part of the American way of live for so long now, grow up, go to work, start a family, go to church, believe in god and your country and respect the troops and all that shite.

Anyone who has the gall to call anyone who doesn't have a child selfish is essentially a hypocrite. When people have children, the first thing that goes through their head is never, "I'm going to help keep the human race going," they think about the fact that THEY want children. Sure, procreation is essential for our survival as a race, but due to our level intellectual thought processes, trying the usual cop out excuse of keeping the species alive holds no real weight, especially when considering an individual case when weighed against the many who do have children. But you dare not call them out because most will find some socially constructed reason why you should have children even though you don't want them.

When I was single and with no kids. My married female and male friends would make comments about me not having a life. I had a complete and happy life. I was soooo devoted to my job and career progression as I was to working out and being healthy. I still managed to have time for my family (parents, sisters) and for my hobbies (beach and bellydancing). But because I had no kids and chose not to marry at 30 years old, they thought I was selfish and conceited and truly unhappy. Even when I explained I was happy with my life (I had it all), they chose not to believe it. I had my son at 35 years old. I am 41 years old now. I truly could not be any happier. It was my decision and i do not regret it even a second. Now I think I did not know what I was missing but in no way I think I was not true to myself by saying that I was happy. I was. It is just a timing thing to do. I have an old friend that chose not to have kids because, as she stated, she does not want to mess up her body. Now that is selfish and conceited but a person with that mentality is better off not having kids anyway. Nobody should tell anybody what to do with their lifes regarding having or not having kids.

My freedom comes first. What I want to do, when I want to do it, how I want to do it.

Do I care for others? Hell, yes. Am I there for my parents if/when they ever need help, no questions asked? Darn tootin'. Do I give a lot of money to my favorite charities (Elephant Sanctuary, www.elephants.com)? Absolutely.

And I'm selfless enough to know that kids are far better off without me as a parent. Oh, I'll probaly adopt a pair of cats someday, but they'll never need clothes or a college fund.
I wish more selfish people like me wouldn't let themselves be brainwashed by the cultural mandate to have kids. We could eliminate so much suffering, while keeping ourselves happy.

I am only 17 but fought a tough and ultimately successful battle to have myself surgically sterilized for medical reasons (endometriosis and PCOS causing painful periods and PMDP -- premenstrual dysphoric psychosis, I mean REALLY "loony" that time of the month). The medical concerns I had were brushed aside on several occasions by the whole set of what childfree people call "Bingos" by doctors hesitant to perform sterilizations on women (usually women) without children. The old "you haven't met the right guy yet", "you can't change your mind later on", and my favorite, "what if X person hadn't been born" -- I literally got a 20 minute sermon about abortion versus adoption after Steve Jobs died, all because the gyn saw that I had an iPod in my purse and saw the need to be all paternal and lecture me on how I wouldn't have had that iPod if "Mrs. Jobs" (shows how much he knows -- Jobs' biological parents weren't married) had been sterilized or aborted "little Steve."

I called bullshit on every last one of these, and finally found a sympathetic surgeon who took my concerns into consideration and was impressed with the level of research I'd done. Of particular concern to a lot of the others was the political football catch-22 about mental illness. I expressed on one occasion (to the Steve Jobs guy) that my family had a history of mental illness and substance abuse and that it would be SELFISH of me to bring another child into this world with that genetic curse that obviously plagues me. His response? "A lot of people get depressed. It's part of being human." That did it. Finally with the other surgeon (a female), I brought up the Andrea Yates case and how she really shouldn't have been a mother considering what she did later on, and what made her do it (schizophrenia, not "the devil"). My own mother thought it was a bad idea to mention that because it would make it sound like I'm "crazy enough" to drown my kids in a bathtub. All the more reason I shouldn't have them, then, right? The doctor agreed, and commended me for knowing my own medical history enough to make this decision, and concurred that there are indeed "far too many people having kids who really shouldn't, but who are we to tell them." In 2012 I had a uterine ablation and bilateral salpingectomy (removal of both Fallopian tubes). I have not had a period ever since and likely never will again. Me 1, bingos 0; science 1, religutards 0.

I am profoundly in favor of "non-voluntary" eugenics even though it's taboo in our society. I believe it is selfish to transmit a genetic illness onto another person. I do not believe a person who is mentally ill is unable to make that decision. In fact, I believe they should be lauded for the same reasons I was, for acknowledging that the "crazies" of our world face intractable suffering that it is SELFISH to bring on them. It especially irks me when parents have one child who is autistic and have another child -- who also ends up autistic -- so that the first child "won't be alone." If the Temple Grandins of the world would be "nonverbal" for once, would keep their Holocaust paranoia to themselves and not fight tooth and nail against the NIH funding developments in prenatal testing, we might not have this epidemic today, or at least we'd be well on our way to fixing it! What the Germans (and the U.S.) did was sound science in theory, but not in practice. If they had offered, say, significant incentives to the mentally ill to be sterilized, and not strapped them down and forced them (ultimately shoving them into the gas chambers when "their kind" didn't die out fast enough), it might still be a viable option not surrounded in shame. It also might not be so bad if the U.S. and Germany hadn't lumped race into the whole thing, calling blacks retarded and Jews crazy, etc. Or if they had euthanized them humanely, i.e. with the "Peaceful Pill" method rather than burning them, electrocuting them, hanging them, this might be considered humane in modern society (like when you "put down" a diseased pet) and not ZOMG TEH HITLER.

We need better genetic testing for mental illness, and we need the fringe groups (like Aspies for Freedom) to shut up about the whole neurodiversity bunk. Some sort of financial incentive should be offered, with maybe a financial penalty for the ones who do reproduce "their kind." We need to acknowledge that yes, Virginia (and all those other wacky anti-science states), mental illness DOES have a genetic component and isn't just about not getting right with god or being punished for sins of the father. We need to acknowledge that not everyone has the biological capabilities to have a healthy offspring, just like not everyone has the biological capabilities to slam-dunk a basketball or write with a certain hand. It should not be an unquestioned "right" as much as a responsibility, conferred only upon certain people who would not be SELFISH enough to pass their genes onto an unsuspecting person and cause havoc for his/her life. But I'm not optimistic that this will ever be the case in America, where even believing in the right to terminate a pregnancy is considered symptomatic of mental illness in and of itself.

I can't even fathom why parents would call a childfree adult selfish? I read that almost half of all pregnancies is not planned. In fact, my friend 'accidentally' fell pregnant with her boyfriend and she continued to smoke and drink during the whole of her pregnancy. I am sorry but that is 'selfish'. The couple who leaves their 6 weeks old baby at their parents every single weekend so that they can go out partying is selfish.

I respect couples who consciously decide to have a baby and I am also not saying that couples who accidentally became parents are bad parents. What I am saying is that people may think childfree woman are 'selfish' but I assure you, being a parent does not necessarily make you selfless.